Wholesale relief for courts: Trenton bench could move into former supermarket space

TRENTON -The space occupied by the city's municipal court could triple in size in a matter of months, relieving the currently cramped conditions while using only 10 percent of the $30 million it would have taken to renovate the existing building, officials say.

By the end of the year, judges, attorneys and clerks could be moving into a defunct food store on Hermitage Avenue that will be refitted to house the court.

"What it does is, for under $3 million, it allows us to open up the supermarket, streamline costs, and get a new courthouse facility that's three times the size of the old building," Inspections Director Len Pucciatti said.

Funds will come from accounts in the city's capital budget that were set up for projects that never came to fruition. No tax money will be spent, Pucciatti said.

Earlier this month, the city council took a step toward approving a bond ordinance that included the funds for the court. A final vote on the ordinance is scheduled for next month.

The municipal court is currently inside police headquarters on North Clinton Avenue. Despite an addition in the 1980s, space has always been cramped inside the facility, Pucciatti said.

"When that building opened in 1974, it was even undersized for the police and courts in 1974," he said.

There are no rooms for private meetings between defendants and their lawyers, or between defendants and prosecutors. The payment windows are often crowded, and the two courtrooms are sometimes filled to capacity, Pucciatti said.

"We've been looking at this problem for a number of years. We've been looking at modifications to that building," he said.

Annual reports from the Mercer Vicinage, the administrative arm of Mercer County courts, had made note of the cramped quarters as well.

"In every one of those reports going back for the last four, five years, every one of them commented our court was in need of additional space," Pucciatti said.

Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg, who oversees the municipal courts as the assignment judge, felt the same way.

"I had talked with them over the years and I know they needed new facilities for years," Feinberg said.

Various solutions had been proposed, but all of them involved new construction at headquarters and devoting more land to the building. Expanding the building could also have required modifications to the air, plumbing, and electrical systems, Pucciatti said.

"Once you start to add square footage on, you have to look at the existing system to handle what you are doing," he said.

The cost soon soared to $30 million.

"And that's just not something we can afford at this point in time or even five years ago," Pucciatti said.

After several other sites, the city seized upon the shopping mall across the street from the West District police station. It offers enough space for three courtrooms, pre-existing utility systems and ample parking, Pucciatti said. Most of the work will involve installing interior walls containing sound-deadening equipment.

"What we're doing here, it's not an ostentatious building, it will be a good building," Pucciatti said. "We're very careful in the materials we chose."

Trenton has found a reasonable solution to the expensive problem that courtroom expansion poses, Feinberg said.

"It sounds to me they really hit upon a good thing, because quite honestly it costs a lot of money," she said.